MobyP

And then God shows up to kick me in the arse. Typical. Hi Dan. (For those who don't know, Dan is just about the best baker in the country, has worked everywhere, and in his spare time designed most of the Baker and Spice recipes to boot. I believe there are certain societies that burn incence to his statue.) If I might ask, how much butter would they have used? I thought it was always equal parts, or at worst, maybe 10% less butter. Also, I came across another recipe where you roll the dough inside the butter, rather than the other way around. Has anyone tried this?

Plugra is pretty good stuff. I don't know what Baker and Spice uses. I was just expecting their pastry to be much tastier than mine - from expertise, or access to ingredients etc. - and it just wasn't. By some distance. But I've come to think of that as the general rule of home cooking. Almost no where you go, and very little you can pay for will have been made with the same attention and care than if you made it yourself. By the way, Kit, you should do a puff pastry for grown-ups demo on this thread!

In England it's fairly easy to find a whole range of normandy butters - usually within the 82-83% fat range. These work fine. I understand that the pros use a lower water content in their puff, though I'm not sure why, as the steam is what causes the layers to expand, no? For an insane puff, I once used eschire butter, which was simply beautiful. But even the inexpensive Normandy stufff is just better than what you'll find in most industrial puff pastries (that is, if you're lucky enough to be able to buy puff pastry made with real butter; most use industrial vegetable shortening). Interestingly, I heard a famous bakers in London, 'Baker & Spice,' sold frozen puff if you asked nicely. I did, but found it very bland. It's just not as beautifully flavoured or textured as the stuff you can make at home. By the way, a traditional sauce to serve with the above would be a sauce rouennaise - which uses the bones from the duck, and is then thickened with duck or pig blood. Now where do I find myself some of that?.

The duck tourte is about as tricky a recipe as I've tried. It was inspired by one from the great Alain Chapel book; though I simplified it as I had to make up some of the components, and discard others (the recipe was in French which I don't read or speak as well as I should). So instead of combining three different farces (stuffings) to bind the duck - one 'au gratin' farce (chicken or duck livers, pork, back fat, red wine), one standard pork or veal (2:1:1 duck breast:pork throat:back fat), plus a gibiers farce (of foie gras, chicken livers, butter, champagne cognac), I just extended the 'au gratin farce' to suit my needs. Next time, if I can I'll do all three. For the duck, first you debone and remove the skin, tendons, veins from a good sized bird. The thighs I roasted for about 30 mins at 400 F, then let cool, and cut them to even them up as best I could. Now to the difficult part. The trick is having the leg meat be cooked through, or well done, the breast meat to be pink, and the foie to be wobbly in the center. I cut the foie so it was in tranches about 1/2 to 2/3rds of an inch. A friend told me to freeze the foie, and chill the breast meat - so that's what I did. I rolled the puff into two sheets, about 1/8th of an inch thick, and placed in the fridge to keep cool. I then took a bowl about 5 or 6 inches across. First I lightly oiled it, then placed a layer off cling film along the insides (to make it easier later to remove the duck). I lay a thin layer of 'au gratin' farce along the bottom and sides. Then I layed the duck breasts as evenly as I could. Then more farce. Then the foie from the freezer. Then a little more farce. Then the thighs, and finished with yet more farce. I then brought out a baking sheet (lined with a silpat), and lay the bottom piece of puff down. Onto this I turned out the duck from the bowl (removing the clingfilm), flattened the domed top slightly, then lay over the other piece of puff. Using a larger bowl, I cut away the excess dough at the base, then painted the tourte with an egg wash, and etched some traditional lines in the surface with the back of a paring knife. This then went into the fridge for 15 minutes (to cool the puff down), and then into a 420F oven for approx 35-40 minutes, or until a thermometer read 115F in the center. I removed the tourte, let it sit for 10-15 mins, and then cut it open. The insides looked like this: To be honest I didn't think I would pull it off. I was really shocked not only to have the pink breast meat, the wobbly foie, and the beautiful puff pastry, but that it was so delicious! Even better, the next day, when cold, it became a great duck terrine en croute. The foie became the texture of pate. The farce was fantastic. So, I couldn't recommend it enough.

Sean - I envy you indeed. It must have been a great time to be there.

If you're doing delicate pastries where you need a lot of rise, then it might do. For the sort of stuff I do, I don't think it makes much of a difference.

Molto, if you couuld post another few pics, it would be much appreciated.

Vedat - I would not presume to tell you anything about dining at this level. My only comments would be, firstly, that they do not serve turbot on the bone; something which I know is a bug bear of yours. It is also not a great dish, though it uses citrus in an interesting manner. Secondly, if the room is anywhere close to full, do your damnedest to create your own tasting menu, if that is what you fancy, out of different dishes to the ones suggested, substituting what you can, to your liking and not theirs. As to Bras cooking - do we think he still does? My suggestion to order from the alc was more about shocking the brigade from an endless stream of cooking exactly the same dishes for each table, all day. If I can taste the difference, I have no doubt that you could as well. From someone who had such a reputation for hands-on and (by the sounds of it) somewhat instinctive cooking, what do you think would be required to pull from Bras something individual, unique and passionate?

I've had some puff pastry pics uploaded for a while now, so I might as well join in the fun. It was, for me, the most intimidating of the pastries to make, but once I'd done it, discovered it wasn't difficult in the slightest. It just took a little confidence, and a little time. It is based on the Roux brothers recipe, which uses white vinegar. The important thing here is temperature - when it comes time for rolling, the butter must be approximately the same temp as the flour. Too cold, and the butter will fracture. Too warm, and it will melt, and seep through the flour. It needs to be malleable. However once you've done this once, you'll understand how for how long or short you need to keep the thing in the fridge until it's ready to be rolled. (Unfortunately I have to do this quickly, so I may need to return and rework some of my descriptions. My apologies if at first some of this seems unclear.) Puff Pastry Ingredients: 500g flour (sifted) 450g + 50g unsalted butter (preferably French) 210 ml water (room temp is fine) 40 ml white wine vinegar 1 teaspoon salt. Equipment: A cool marble surface, preferably. A rolling pin. A pastry brush. Melt the 50g of butter. Place flour in a bowl. Make a well. Into this, place melted butter, water, vinegar salt. Incorporate all the ingredients until you have a smoothe dough, and then roll into a ball. Cut an 'X' into the top with a knife, wrap in cling film, and place in fridge for 1 or 2 hours. Make a block of butter. If using two 250g blocks of butter (minus the 50g you used for melting), cut them both in half horizontally. Lay two or three sheets of cling film on your surface, and place the four parts of butter together so they make a large rectangular block. Then, with your thumb, join them together: or alternatively, place a second sheet of cling film over the butter, and using your rolling pin, gently roll the four parts together. Wrap this in cling film, and place in the fridge for approx. 1 hour. Remove both the flour paste and the butter block, and let them sit for 5 mins. Start to open up the flour paste - you're going to extend each quarter until it becomes a flap. (See images) Flour your top (this is an important habit to get into with puff pastry). Using the pin, roll the flaps outward in each direction, until they can be folded over the butter rectangle in the center. Here I've placed the butter, still wrapped, in the center to see how much more I need to roll. When the dough is big enough, unwrap the butter, and place it in the center of the dough, and start folding in the flaps to meet in the middle. As you fold in each flap, brush away the excess flour. You want to keep the pastry as free from loose flour as possible. When you have folded all four flaps in, brush away what flour remains. Now, you need to estimate the temperature of the pastry. If it's still cold enough from the fridge, you can start to roll. But if it's a warm day, or it's taken you longer than you expected, you might want to place the pastry in the fridge again for 20 mins, just so it starts to firm up again. When you're ready, flour the board and your pastry well. Now, you only ever roll puff pastry in one direction, and back again. So working on the long side of the rolling board, I start by 'denting' the pastry block with the length of my rolling pin, just to soften up the thing as a whole, and get a feel for how firm or soft the butter is inside. Then, slowly, roll the dough out the length of your board (or a little longer) until it is a quarter inch thick for it's entire length. Now we're going to give it its first 'turn.' Brush away the excess flour, and fold one end two thirds of the way in. Brush away the excess again... and then fold the other flap over the first. Press down the edges gently to seal. This is the first 'turn.' It means you then take your dough, and turn it 90 degrees, and start rolling out in the opposite direction to the one you did previously. So, if you rolled 'lef to right' for the first one, you'll need to roll 'up and down' for the second turn Or to explain it another way, once you fold it in three, the pastry will be thinner than it is long. Always roll in the direction of the length, rather than the width. Because of the way you fold it, this will be along a different plane each time. (I'm sure someone can explain this better then me). Ultimately, you need to fold the dough in 3 a total of 6 times, but you have to keep the butter from melting, so it's best not to do more than 2 turns each time. How do you remember? Use your fingers to make indents, so you can keep track. Then wrap the dough in cling film, and place in the fridge for 30 mins to an hour between each 2 rolls. You can keep the pastry well-wrapped in the fridge for several days, but it also freezes well. I read that you should freeze it only after 4 turns. Otherwise, if you go to 6, the freezing can fracture the layers of butter, and the pastry won't rise as well. Either way, I cut it into thirds (after 4 or 6 turns), and freeze it that way. To defrost, I place it in the fridge for 12 hours, and then either use as is, or roll out 2 more times if I had frozen it at 4 turns. Geddit? Anyway, many things to do with this stuff. It's absolutely delicious. I haven't been able to use the supermarket stuff since I started making my own. You'll see - there's just no comparison. A couple of examples of uses... A classic Tarte Tatin Some nectarine tarts and most recently, a large duck and foie gras tourte. Again, sorry that I had to do this in such a rush. I'll edit it as I can to make it more clear. Hope this was of some help.

I'm with Jack. If you buy a forerib of beef, and find a simple yorkshire pud recipe (and they're all simple), you'll make your friends very happy indeed.

VOLUME

I have the very sad news to convey that the Havelock Tavern was gutted by a fire. I went there today for a spot of lunch, and all the windows were charred by smoke or broken. My personal favourite, too. I hope they manage to rebuild.

What worries me the most is that this is a wider trend, catering to a new crowd of mobile diners coming from much farther afield, as the most efficient way of sustaining a profit level. It has less and less to do with a single individual standing in a kitchen or by the pass, trying to really cook at the highest levels, rather than turn their cuisine into one of repetitive fun-fair ride for an infinite line of customers. How many true individuals are left?

Well that would explain it! Thanks Alberto!

Sam, I think it certainly helps, or at least couldn't hurt, especially if someone doesn't have a lot of experience (as much as your fine pasta-making self, for instance!). The quick version breaks down to five steps, and you'll need a thermometer. 1. Peel and slice the potatoes into evenly sized pieces of approx. 3/4 inch thickness. Place in hot water between 158-160 F for 30 minutes. This gelatinizes the walls off the starch cells. 2. Drain, and either shock in ice water, or place under running cold water until cold. This fixes the starch into gelatin. 3. Return to water almost boiling, and cook until tender (but not over-cooked or mushy, just until a knife encounters almost no resistence when you push it in). 4. Drain, and then I return the tats to the pot over a small flame, just until they dry out. Maybe a minute and a half at the outside. 5. Run through a potato ricer while still hot. Add 150g of flour and an egg and half a handful of parmagiano per 500g of potato. Mix quickly, but don't over-kneed. As you mentioned, alternatives to this include boiling the potatoes with the skins still on to prevent ingress of moisture, and then peeling the potatoes while still hot, or placing the whole potatoes in a 375F oven for an hour and 15 or so, and then peeling them. Unfortunately, this is just averaging out the mistakes and successes until you have lowest common denominator of texture, and so depends entirely on experience to make it better or worse (i.e. knowing that your potatoes are slightly smaller than usual, or larger, and so should probably only cook for an hour and five minutes, or an hour and forty etc etc.) By the way, some of the gummiest gnocchi I ever had were in the middle of Naples. To a certain degree, it's a cultural preference. An entirely non-gummy gnoccchi may not be possible or preferable with the flour potato approach. It is partly the gumminess that holds the thing together - which is useful, especially if you want to fry them as well - which is why the ricotta works so well, allowing a lightness.

Chufi - those look absolute perfection. I bet they were delicious. I think they would be classed either as agnolotti or ravioli though - depending on the region - tortelli usually have only vegetable fillings. The recipes I've seen from Batali, Chiarello, and Ducasse all have 150g flour (a little more than a cup) for every 500g potato (a little more than a pound), plus differing amounts of parmagiano. If you add ricotta, and it does improve things, you can cut back on the potato, but less so the flour. By the way, you can also do stufffed gnocchi by rolling out the dough (like Sam does) into a snake, then flattening it to a couple of inches wide, and running a thin line of meat sauce or cooked sausage meat or cooked chicken livers etc down the center, then folding it over and joining it (if you think of it as a kind of potato hose, enclosing the filling). When you proceed to cut the gnocchi, each cut seals off the filling from spilling out. Serve as you would normally. As to pillowy lightness/texture, and apologies for my slight dip into the technical, you have to start considering starch content, the style of potato, and the gelatinizing of the starch prior to cooking. For this last bit, see Jack Lang's mind bogglingly good egci potato course. Many American chefs prefer older idaho potatoes. Some - like Collichio - prefer the higher starch of Yukon Gold (if you're in the US). The real nut cases in Europe insist on using a type of potato grown in the mountains at high altitude. You're more likely to get a soft non-glue texture using an Idaho if you're a first timer and can't be arsed with the more technical aspects of potato cookery. The Yukon needs slightly more experience to avoid gumminess. Obviously you must never put the cooked potato into a food processor. Also, you can par-boil them until almost done, cool, oil slightly, and place for several hours in the fridge if you want. Makes the whole thing much simpler. Just warm them through before serving, and make sure they're not stuck together. Best of luck to all.

Pics from Da Michele and elsewhere from my trip.

They can be extravagant - both cornucopian and in cost. I can't see them upgrading Fresh and Wild - it would be too expensive. Better to have a cheaper cousin where they don't have to worry as much about flag-ship principles. Suzi - unless you start your own allotment, marry a farmer, or start a sort of socialist bring-veggies-to-the-masses direct action group, yer corporately buggered. There's almost no escape.

I'm told that Bras took a long time to achieve its 3rd star, for basically the reasons I outlined - primarily that of consistency. The pecking order issue is secondary for me (or at least, where I was within it). The problem was the food - too much of it tasted flat, tired and reproduced. After a while that much duplication comes through on the plate. You begin to taste it. I'm sure you can still get the odd good meal there, though I don't know what criteria would have to be satisfied. We happened to be in a smaller side room, but the larger room also had tables, so for all I know mine was the 43rd foie gras churned out and then the 43rd turbot. It becomes a business practice. Who would travel 5000 miles to have the cheap lunch option? Certainly no one on the day I was there. Everyone comes looking for the Bras meal - which is equated with this particular and only occasionally changing tasting menu. So, it becomes not just an aesthetic or culinary issue, but a business one. If you're the 5000th person that month to have exactly the same dishes prepared by the same guy, who has been in that position since the beginning of April, you're going to taste it. As far as Bras is concerned, people are travelling from around the world (myself included) to have thw Bras experience. He isn't doing what Keller does, rotating several hundred dishes during the course of a year. He's presenting several fixed menus and an alc which presumably last mostly unchanged for the entire season. Believe me, I don't get to eat this way more than two or three times a year. I spend a lot of time thinking about where I should go. I travelled a long way to have a spectacular meal, and it just wasn't there that day. What I had felt like an imitation of a great meal, without actually achieving its own greatness. No one's more pissed off about it than I am.

"full fat food" was also the "personal trademark" of the "Two Fat Ladies" from England on Food Network ... remember them? Clarissa and Jennifer ← But at least they used real butter, eggs and cream rather than reconstituted industrial chemicals lathered in toxic waste. Ug. I like the odd Krispy Kreme, but I find that woman a real insult to everything I find worthy in food.

Wholefoods at its best is fantastic. At its worst, appallingly expensive, arrogant, with problematic food handling issues.

I hadn't realised how accessible Reims was - certainly any trip from London to Paris could include a quick visit.

Short rib ravioli...

Matthew Norman, late of the Sunday Telegraph. And wasn't he formerly sued for a particularly biting review a while back?

It sounds great, but any long slow braising of the veal (and I'm presuming you'll go for shank or cheek, something that will take a while) will kill the delicate flavour of leek. Why not, once you have the veal done, saute some leeks in butter until they've wilted, and then puree with the veal? You probably won't need an egg, as the veal will be gelatinous enough as is. Just add a bit of the braising liquid, and a few tablespoons of the braising veg. The puree will incorporate/absorb more liquid than you imagine. As to shape, how about a scalloped round ravioli? With special fillings, I think you want to be able to present them individually on a plate, say a circle of five or six, with a drizle of sauce. Alternatively, if you want something a litttle more rustic, the pansotti would work. Let me know how it goes, and best of luck.